Word.ws English Dictionary

loud

/ˈlæʊ̯d/UK/ˈlaʊ̯d/

loud adjective: of great intensity.

loud: of great intensity
Image: NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

loud (comparative louder, superlative loudest)

  1. Of great intensity.
    • Turn that music down; it's too loud.
    • What was that? It sounded like a really loud sneeze.
  2. (usually, thing, event) Noisy.
    • a loud party that went on all night
    • She is loud and stubborn.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Proverbs vii:11
  3. (usually, event) Not subtle or reserved, brash.
    • Some of the loudest blubberers are developers who, having made enormous profits as a result of local, state, and federal subsidies, complain that government doesn't do enough for them.1988 December 9, Ben Joravsky, “Property-tax assessments rise; north siders are revolting”, in Chicago Reader, archived from the original on 24 Oct 2020
    • Many people, or at least a handful of very loud people, hate to being dubbed Millennial. They see it as derogatory.2015 August 24, Samantha Sharf, “What is a ‘Millennial’ Anyway? Meet the Man who Coined the Phrase”, in Forbes, New York, N.Y.: Forbes, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 Sep 2023
  4. (usually, decorations) Having unpleasantly and tastelessly contrasting colours or patterns; gaudy.
    • a loud style of dress; loud colors
    • In comparison with the loud Portrait of E.C. Ricart (ill. p. 13) two years earlier, Miró has captured a soft, hushed atmosphere here.2006, Janis Mink, Joan Miró, →ISBN, page 22
  5. (slang) High-quality; premium; (by extension) having a strong or pungent odour indicating good quality.
  6. Of great intensity.
    • Ohls showed the motorcycle officer his badge and we went out on the pier, into a loud fish smell which one night's hard rain hadn't even dented.1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, →ISBN, page 45

Noun

loud (countable and uncountable, plural louds)

  1. (colloquial) A loud sound or part of a sound.
    • The expander doesn't really make the louds louder and the softs softer in one step […]2012, Sam McGuire, Paul Lee, The Video Editor's Guide to Soundtrack Pro, page 103
  2. (slang, uncountable) High-quality marijuana.

Adverb

loud (comparative louder, superlative loudest)

  1. Loudly.
    • Who knocks so loud at door?c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]. Epilogue.”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […]...
    • Unluckily that worthy Officer having, in a literal Sense, taken his Fill of Liquor, had been some Time retired to his Bolster, where he was snoaring so loud, that it was not easy to convey a Noise in at his Ears capable of drowning that which issued from his Nostrils.1749, Henry Fielding, chapter 14, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book VII, pages 71-72

Proper noun capitalized: Loud

Loud (countable and uncountable, plural Louds)

  1. (countable) A surname.
    1. (abbreviation, clipping) Clipping of McLoud: A surname from Scottish Gaelic.
    2. (alternative) Alternative form of McLeod, McLouth.
  2. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of River Loud.
  3. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Loud Township.

loud meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

loud in Hindi

of a sound
ज़ोरदार zordar

loud in Marathi

जोरात

loud in Urdu

of a sound
اُونچی aūncī, تیز tez, زیادہ zyāda, زوردار zordar
of a colour, clothing, etc.
تیز tez

loud in Bengali

জোরে
More languagesFewer languages
loud in Telugu
బిగ్గరగా
loud in Malayalam
ഉറക്കെ
loud in Kannada
ಜೋರಾಗಿ
loud in Arabic
عَالٍ ʕālin, اَلْعَالِي al-ʕālī, صَخِب ṣaḵib
loud in Malay
kuat, lantang
loud in Persian
بلند boland
loud in Thai
ดัง dang
loud in Vietnamese
to, ầm ĩ
loud in Myanmar
ကျယ် kyai

Examples of loud in a sentence

  • So roundly did he vituperate the inn management in particular, and with such a loud flow of words, that I trembled lest he should be heard on the veranda.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company...
  • Money still talks — indeed, thanks in part to the Roberts court, it talks louder than ever.2014 April 25, Paul Krugman, “The Piketty Panic”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 04 Jul 2020:

All 40 example sentences with loud

Synonyms of loud

4 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of loud

Forms of loud

Adjective
comparativelouder
superlativeloudest
alternative form (obsolete)lowd
Noun
plurallouds
Adverb
comparativelouder
superlativeloudest
Proper noun
pluralLouds

Origin of loud

From Middle English loude, loud, lud, from Old English hlūd (“loud, noisy, sounding, sonorous”), from Proto-West Germanic *hlūd, from Proto-Germanic *hlūdaz, *hlūþaz (“heard”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱlewtos (“heard, famous”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱlew- (“to hear”). More at listen. Cognates Akin to Scots loud, lowd (“loud”), Swedish ljud, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk lyd, Faroese ljóð, Icelandic hljóð, West Frisian lûd (“loud”), Dutch luid (“loud”), Low German lud (“loud”), German laut (“loud”), Irish clú (“repute”), Welsh clywed (“heard”), clod (“praise”), Latin laudare (“praise”), Tocharian A/B klots/klautso 'ear', klyostär 'heard', Ancient Greek κλυτός (klutós, “famous”), Albanian quaj (“to name, call”), shquar (“famous, notorious”), Old Armenian լու (lu, “the act of hearing”), Old Church Slavonic слава (slava, “glory”), слово (slovo, “word”), Sanskrit श्रव (śráva, “glory”).

From Middle English loude, from Old English hlūde (“loudly”), from Proto-Germanic *hlūda, *hlūdô (“loudly”), related to Etymology 1.

As an English surname, * from the adjective loud, * from the place name Lyde, * and a spelling variant of Louth in Lincolnshire, itself related to the adjective, * and finally variants of the Irish surnames McLeod, McLouth.

Words formed from loud

Phrases with loud

5 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with loud

20 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about loud

What does loud mean?
Loud means of great intensity.
What is loud in Hindi?
Loud in Hindi is ज़ोरदार (zordar). See Loud meaning in Hindi.
How do you use loud in a sentence?
So roundly did he vituperate the inn management in particular, and with such a loud flow of words, that I trembled lest he should be heard on the veranda.
What part of speech is loud?
Loud can be an adjective, a noun, an adverb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce loud?
Loud is pronounced /ˈlaʊ̯d/ (UK).

Words near loud in the dictionary

  1. louchettes
  2. Loucheux
  3. louching
  4. Loucinda
  5. loucoumi
  6. loud
  7. loud and clear
  8. loud hailer
  9. loud hailers
  10. loud mouth
  11. loud mouths

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: loud (page history and authors); Loud (page history and authors); loud (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); loud (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); loud (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); loud (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); loud (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-loud.ogg.

Cite this entry: “loud.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/loud. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.